Clarke My Words

Had he heard her right? "Sorry," he asked slowly, "did I hear you right? Did you just ask whether I'd mind you sleeping with other people?" She cocked her head slightly to the side and continued to stare at him. It was quite unnerving really, her eyes flickered slightly as if she were trying to map every tiny shift in his expression. "Yes," she confirmed with a matter-of-fact air. She paused for a second and asked again, casually, "Would you?" Her face gave nothing away aside from a mild curiosity belied by an underlying intensity. Was she...joking? "Are you...joking?" he asked, quite genuinely. Her eyebrow flicked upwards for just a moment and with an almost imperceptible sigh she leaned forward to sip her drink through a straw. "Well, either way," he continued hesitantly, "no, no that would not be cool with me." Again she looked at him and cocked her head to the side. Her eyes narrowed slightly. ...

Kenny would always remember with perfect clarity the first time he fell in love. He had been fifteen years old and walking to the bus stop one morning on the way to school with his friend Maggie, who had lived down the road from him where he grew up. It was a strange and memorable day for a number of reasons, not least of which being that the pair were only just returning to school after their town had been lashed by the tail-end of a hurricane a few days before. Though much had been done to clean up the mild devastation, there remained plenty of evidence of the weather system’s passing. Absent tiles marred the uniform roofs like missing teeth, while light-coloured strips below their lips spoke of gutters ripped away. Too many twigs and branches littered the ground, and the crushed iron railings at the edge of the park spoke of fallen trees that had since been removed. All the way to the bus stop he and Maggie had talked in hushed tones, paying unconscious reverence to the subtle but ...

Ted could hardly believe his luck when he spotted the camcorder at the car boot sale. He'd been keeping an eye out for a Full HD device for months and had seen the Acorn H3 on a couple of websites. It had always been way beyond his price range but suddenly there it was, sat innocuously between a grimy TV/VCR combo plastered with Alf stickers and a tattered and sun-faded VHS Thorn Birds box set. A Post-It note had been taped to the side of the camcorder with one hastily scrawled word. "Defective". "What’s wrong with it?” he asked the woman stood behind the table. She leaned in closer to Ted and brought with her the sharp aroma of cheap perfume coupled with a musty tendril of last night’s wine. “What’s that, sweetheart?” “The camcorder. What’s wrong with it?” She looked at him blankly for a moment and then followed his gesture. “Oh that,” she said pursing her lips in distaste, “that thing never did work right. My Dale was forever fiddling with the damned thing, sayin...

It can be quite difficult moving to a new town, particularly if you don’t know many people in the area. When I first moved to the city I quickly realised that because I had so few companions to call upon, I had inadvertently become something of a commuter hermit. I would scuttle from my flat to work and then right back again at the end of the day with very little deviation. In a bid to break out of this downward spiral, I developed a morning routine that initially made me feel wonderfully metropolitan but soon grew to be a tiresome waste of time. Rather than eating breakfast at home of a weekday morning, I would head to a cafe somewhere near my place of work for a cappuccino and a muffin. In order to keep this routine spontaneity fresh I changed the cafe I went to every week and after a couple of months settled into a rota after returning to the very first cafe I had visited. After all, there are only so many eateries within walking distance of work. This comfortable rut had an unfor...

[Just a quick note to preempt any confusion, this short story was written to be a part of the Machine of Death Volume 2 anthology . Unfortunately it didn't make the cut so I thought I'd publish it here. Enjoy!] To whom it may concern, I remember once hearing a story about a man whose cause of death slip read “Ripcord Malfunction”. This man had never been near a parachute before he received the prediction and had had no real plans to go looking for one in the future. His father clapped him on the back and laughed, “that should be easy enough to avoid, eh?” The story goes that this man, still just a boy of course, retreated to his room and thought long and hard about his prediction - I mean, who doesn’t? He thought about all he would need to do to put off his death by keeping himself away from the possibility of a “Ripcord Malfunction” for as long as possible. Basically, he would have to stay away from planes. And also lawnmowers. For that matter, any petrol-driven p...